Peter Wernick

PETER WERNICK. Born 1946 Transcript of OH 1489V This interview was recorded on December 20, 2007, for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program. The interviewer is Anne Dyni. The interview also is available in video format, filmed by Liz McCutcheon. The interview was transcribed by Dee Baron. NOTE: The interviewer’s questions and comments appear in parentheses. Added material appears in brackets. ABSTRACT: Banjo player Pete Wernick talks about his career as a musician, ranging from playing bluegrass in New York City during the 1960s to playing banjo with Earl Scruggs on the David Letterman Show in 2005, as well as the many professional successes he has had in between, most notably as a member of the bluegrass band Hot Rize, which played together for twelve years and has continued to play highly popular reunion shows. [A]. 00:00 (Today is December 20th, 2007. I’m interviewing Pete Wernick of 7930 Oxford Road in Niwot. Pete, when and where were you born?) New York City, February 25, 1946. (Do you have any brothers or sisters?) My one and only sister just passed away about a month ago. (Oh, I’m sorry.) She was my older sister. Her name was Sarah and she lived in Boston. (Was she a musician?) Not at all. No. She was a writer and collaborated on various books including medical books. (Were there any instruments in your family at all?) My dad always had an interest in music and from his childhood he played harmonica by ear, and that was the one instrument he would take out at gatherings and so on and played on a pretty rudimentary level. But he always liked it, and he was interested in music, and he would acquire instruments. So as I was growing up I was aware that there was a banjo in the house. There was also a guitar; there was also bongo drums; there was a violin; Page 1 of 18 there was an accordion. They were all cheap instruments that my dad had accumulated at auctions and things like that. When I developed an interest in the banjo, I remembered there was banjo in the house. That was what I started playing on was this banjo made in the late 1800s that had been slightly refurbished after he acquired it. That’s what I started on. [Hands Wernick an instrument] (This is the instrument that you play today.) Well, it’s an instrument. This is a very rudimentary—it’s like a beginner instrument. [Strums guitar] It’s a lot closer to what I started with than what I play as my main instrument today. It’s a very simple—you know the early banjos that were made were gourds, you know, chopped in half and then like a cat’s skin or something sort of attached onto it like a drum and then with the addition of a neck and the strings, you’d have stringed instrument. In the 1800s they figured out that they could make this kind of hooped arrangement here, so that’s banjos have been for 150 or more years. Mine is like this but it also has lots of other features including a piece of bell brass laid in here called a tone ring which makes it louder and brighter and then a whole additional piece on the back called a resonator which makes a bigger, louder sound. Before the days of amplification, those were important developments because a banjo had to be loud to keep up with the sounds of brass instruments in a marching band or something like that. The loudness factor is less necessary now because you can be heard with microphones, but the tonal character that those changes made are part of what the bluegrass bands’ sounds are all about now. But I have this in the living room because it’s quiet. You can do this [strums banjo] when somebody is even napping or on the phone. When I’m practicing with my full out way of practicing, you couldn’t do anything else in the same room while I’m there, which is what caused me to build a practice cabin over 100 yards from the house. And even then, my wife sometimes says she can hear me practicing even when I’m facing away from the house inside the cabin—it still makes plenty of sound. (Who makes this instrument versus who makes the one—?) This is called the “good time banjo.” It’s probably the most popular starting banjo now being made. It’s made in California by the Deering Company and the one I play for my main instrument is made by Gibson. The Gibson Mastertone is sort of the standard, top- of-the-line model that a lot of pros use, and I’ve had the one that I’ve been playing since 1988. I had a similar one, an older one, made in the ‘30s that I played for over 20 years prior to that, also a Gibson Masterone. 04:29 (How old were you when you really got into playing the banjo?) Well, I had had a little bit of interest and actually a couple of banjo lessons when I was something like twelve, but I wasn’t that interested in taking the lessons and that didn’t take me very far, and I discontinued it. But when I was fourteen-and-a-half or so, I was Page 2 of 18 in a period of my life where I had friends there in the Bronx where I was growing up who were into folk music and would sing and play folk songs just around the house, at parties and whatnot. One of those friends offered to show me a few phrases on the banjo. He says, “You like banjo, you want to learn how to play some?” So he showed me that and I went home and got out my dad’s old banjo and started practicing on it. And it fit right into my social need structure at the time. It was a way of getting attention and fitting in, and I liked it besides. And I immediately got a big head for practicing, and I made a decision which I’ve heard tell other people making a similar decision which is, “If I practice enough on this thing, people are going to have to pay attention. If I get good enough, they’ll just have to pay attention.” And I thought, “I can do that.” And I did. At the time there was an instruction book by Pete Seeger that a lot of people used, but it had its limitations. It did not show anything useful about how to play the three-finger bluegrass style that was played by Earl Scruggs, which is the kind of banjo-playing that turned me on the most. My sister got me, for my 15th birthday, a couple of records of Scruggs, the Flatt and Scruggs band. And then I had examples of exactly what I wanted to sound like in the house, and the only trouble was I didn’t have anybody to show me how to make that happen. So, using the rudiments that I was already learning from my friends about just how to follow chord changes, I was able to at least piece together a few elements and figure out ways of somewhat duplicating the sounds I was hearing. With a great deal of commitment and extended effort, I got closer and closer. By the time I was graduating high school—I graduated pretty young, I was just past my 16th birthday when I graduated high school. For my high school graduation, I combined money that I had with money I got from my parents, and I was able to get my first Gibson Mastertone banjo. So, at the age of 16, I was kind of launched at that point, and I was getting good enough that I could play with other people and perform a little bit. In New York City, one might think, how do you get started as a banjo player? But it’s such a big city that anything you’re interested in, there’ll be some other people interested in that, and if it’s one in a million, well, then, in the New York metropolitan area, that’s 16 people. And that’s about, actually, the number of very committed blue grass people there were in the New York area and I was able to find them. There was a collecting point, sort of. There’s a park in lower Manhattan called Washington Square Park and there was just starting a tradition of people who were getting together to jam, play informally, on Sunday afternoons, and I would go down there on the subway with my banjo, and I would meet people and some of them I’m still friends with, the people that I met down there. And there’s some really good musicians. And they were part of my motivation to play. I went to college in Manhattan, I went to Columbia College and there were some musicians of different types that I met around there and got into trying to find other people to play bluegrass with. By the time I was a little bit into college, I had a little bluegrass band and then I got to do a bluegrass radio program on my college FM radio Page 3 of 18 station. I had the only bluegrass radio program in New York City during the 1960s.

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